Fantasy Sports Still a Man’s Game, By and Large

As most fantasy football players are gearing up for their league’s playoffs (or looking to play spoiler, in some cases), it’s prime time to take a look at the fantasy sports landscape – thankfully, Nielsen has done just that.

And as it stands, fantasy sports are still, by and large, a mans game. According to Nielsen’s research, more than two-thirds of fantasy sports players are men (68.4%), and 49% more likely to play than the average U.S. internet user. Still, you can look as these numbers from the other side and say that over 30% of the fantasy sports-playing population are women. Ladies, represent.

The most fantasy-happy age group are those between 25 and 34 years old, and Nielsen found that marital status doesn’t really factor in the decision to create a fantasy team – the split between married and single fantasy sports players was negligible.

And who’s the king of fantasy sports? By a thin margin, it’s Yahoo – followed closely by ESPN.

Here’s my favorite finding from Nielsen’s study, however – a list of things that fantasy sports players are more likely to shop for online as compared to the average U.S. internet user. Yes, beer is on the list.

Also, it appears that fantasy sports players are checking their mobile fantasy apps almost once a day, on average.

“Fantasy sports players are also taking their teams with them on the road, as more than 10 million Americans accessed fantasy football apps on their smartphones, up 15 percent from a year ago. Looking at the top fantasy football apps, Yahoo! and ESPN each had five million unique users, respectively, during September. Overall, fantasy football app users spent 2 hours 14 minutes per person, on average, using these smartphone apps during September 2013, and they opened them 27 times per person on average—that’s almost once a day.”